SCLB had Circle Time in the library today to talk about what we learned in the Wilfrid book rap.

We enjoyed:

* seeing our Grandpa Peter outline on the rap blog Gallery
* finding the chicken in the pages of Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge
* Mr Hosking’s scary stories
* Mr McLean’s scary poem of The Hairy Toe
* Miss Mitchell and her walking stick.

The book rap improved our reading by:
* watching the pictures in Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge
* turning the pages
* using the pictures to help us read
* asking my Mum to read to me.

The book rap helped us with technology by:
* helping us learn
* thinking about it
* playing games on the Internet
* seeing all the people in the Gallery.

We had fun with the Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge book rap!

From SCLB
Penrith PS

We have had so much fun doing the “Wilfrid” book rap and are already talking about which book might be chosen next time! Some of us did the “Possum Magic” rap last year.

We have enjoyed working with our buddies from mainstream classes and especially the extra work that Mrs Raymond’s class did after we made our wonderful Mr Barden. We can’t believe how popular Mr Barden has become, he is quite a celebrity at Caddies Creek and even got his picture in our school newsletter.

It was great fun deciding who would be our person and even more fun making him. We loved hearing the story over and over again. We enjoyed working on our joint constructions then doing our blog entries. We got excited seeing all the new characters in the Gallery, especially our very own Mr Barden.

See you all next year!
2/6S@CCPS

This was the first time that 1/2T participated in the book rap. We learnt so many things like:

how to type
learning about old people
learning what a memory was
learning a little bit about the olden days
learning about other schools and students
how to get onto the blog
creating new characters
learning to send messages
Mem Fox’s writing and Julie Vivas’ illustrations
learning about characters.

How we may have done things differently?

Make it more exciting by putting in more pictures
Being able to access the blog more.

Until the next time,
1-2tnewtownpsrappers

The last of my rap groups finished off their elderly resident outlines yesterday – last week was frantic here, with Book Fair and Grandparents’ Day – and I’ve just taken digital photos of their work, which I’ll add to the Gallery tonight.

The whole school community is celebrating their love of reading this afternoon with a reading picnic – a great sight to behold: 400 students, their teachers, students’ parents and toddler siblings, spread out in groups scattered throughout the school playground, enjoying books and nibblies in a picnic atmosphere. These celebrations have become an end-of-term tradition here at Penrith PS over recent years, and they are so effective at bringing a community together with a literacy focus.

Thanks to all our participating schools for making this book rap such a memorable experience. Lots of you were first time rappers and you launched into this with so much enthusiasm.

I presented the rap blog and wiki to a group of our parents on Tuesday night and they were surprised/enthused/fascinated at how we had harnessed the capabilities of Web 2.0 to share such meaningful learning and teaching, especially that their children had been communicating with students all over Australia and even Vietnam. While preparing my talk, I re-read those early introductory messages again this week, and it was a great reminder at how far we’d all come in such a short time! Great work, everyone!

Thanks also to Mrs Scheffers at Caddies Creek PS, Mrs Keane and the team at Ryde State Office (NSW DET) for making sure it all came together.

See you at the next rap!

Regards, Mr McLean
Rap Coordinator,
Penrith PS

We learnt about blogs and wikis, about using email, about the different ideas from other schools and especially about reading a book a few times to really get to know it. Our favourite activity was making up new residents for the old people’s home – we liked thinking up strange names and silly happenings.

Most of us would love to do another book rap but a few of us would prefer not to.

All the best from 2M.

2S enjoyed reading the book and posting our responses on the blog. We also loved colouring in the characters and finding adjectives to describe them. Our homework project was to make a memory box of our own. Then we presented it to the class. We saw some funny photos of each other when we were little. It was great fun.

We hope to join in a blog again so we can learn more about books and blogging.

See you later alligators……… maybe in a while crocodile.

Thank you all so much your wonderful efforts and creative ideas throughout this book rap! I have been so amazed by the clever and interersting responses from schools from all across Australia and Vietnam! It has been so much fun sharing our thoughts and ideas online, using the new technologies of blogs and wikis.

I’m sure students and teachers alike, will always have very special memories of Mem Fox’s and Julie Vivas’ beautiful picture book Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge and will fondly remember the time we spent book rapping together!

A big “Thank you” to all the teaching staff (classroom teachers, teacher librarians, Support unit teachers and assistants), who took up the challenge of this book rap and who intergtated it into their teaching program!

I look forward to rapping with you all again in the future!

Happy reading everyone!
Mrs Scheffers
Rap Co-ordinator
Teacher Librarian @ Caddies Creek PS

We have enjoyed rapping with you all. We feel that we have learnt a lot by doing this blog. We thought it was great that we can use blogging to communicate with lots of people around the world and that we could share our ideas with everyone.

We now have a better understanding of how memories are lots of different things to different people and how old people sometimes lose their memory. We agree with what slgs1 said, ‘…we don’t have to be big to make a difference in someone’s life.’

We loved making the new character and using rhyming words like Mem Fox. We came up with so many different characters that it was hard for us to decide on just one. We are looking forward to our next book rap.

Hope to blog with you all in the future.
Newtownrappers

This is another group of Penrith PS rappers ready to wrap up.

We enjoyed reading the picture book of Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge. We enjoyed learning about the characters in the story and learning about Mem Fox. We liked going to the wiki page to see all the memories in Wilfrid’s basket; every time we went, there were new objects! We liked reading Rap Responses on the Rap Blog.

Two of us liked tracing Matthew’s outline the best to make our new resident, Patrick St Green. Two of us liked seeing the other groups’ outlines, and the faces they chose for Mrs Day and Grandpa Peter.

Here’s what we learnt about reading:
* “You get to see surprising things in picture books. You can imagine in your brain and sometimes the book’s pictures show you more than the words say.”
* Reading is sometimes easy and sometimes hard. Book raps can make reading easier.
* Sometimes the pictures tell a different story. We found clues about Wilfrid’s chicken in the illustrations.
* Julie Vivas likes to hide things, like Wilfrid playing with Mr Tippett’s dressing gown cord, Miss Nancy’s pink socks and the chicken under the chair.
* We learnt many new hard words, like “forgotten” and “memory”.
* Reading picture books can help you read longer books later on.
* Reading blogs is like reading little stories.

Here’s what some of us learnt about technology:
* “We can send messages to other schools – and around the world – on the rap blog.”
* “Computers sometimes lose their memories.”
* “When we change the wiki page, the message goes all the way to America and back again very fast.”
* “I liked it when we used Google Images to see all the different pens and pencils that Mrs Keane could use as a memory item.”
* “‘Wiki wiki’ is a Hawaiian word that means ‘Quick!’”
* “We searched for things on the Internet with Google.”

Isabelle thought that Caddies Creek Public School did a great job making Mrs Curl’s glittery red shoes. Daniel reckons Caddies Creek students could make 1000 people in one day!

We enjoyed this book rap very much. Next week we have to finish our artwork for the Gallery.

Best wishes from
penrithpsrappers

• reading about the other schools and their ideas
• reading the book in more detail and becoming book detectives
• when we chose our favourite character in Rap Point 2
• creating Mrs Curl (especially her shiny red shoes and putting the green glitter on her dress). We also liked seeing her on the blog.
• listening to Mem Fox’s voice on the DVD and on the CD
• working with the other class in the library with Mrs Scheffers
• using the SmartBoard (interactive whiteboard)
• talking about memories, about what they are, how they make us feel and why they are important. We enjoyed sharing our memories as a class.
• reading the blog messages and using a Wiki for the first time.
• making decisions by voting. We had to independently think and make our own decisions.
• putting on our “Book Rap Caps” because they helped us to think.

What new skills we learnt:

• how a Book Rap works
• how to use Wikis and Blogs
• we are better at reaching an agreement
• we are better at expressing our ideas
• listening to other people’s ideas.

We also learnt:

• that memories are special and important
• about other people’s lifestyles and where they go to school. We learnt where different places are and what it may be like to live there
• to share our ideas with other Rappers and we learnt to appreciate other people’s new ideas
• about Mem Fox and we learnt about her father, mother and grandfather and the influence these people had on her characters
• about the author and illustrator
• to appreciate the special people in our lives
• new skills on the internet such as adding to a blog and changing avatars
• the steps necessary to access the blog.

We hope to Rap with you in the future.
2Delightfully Delicious and the K-6Adorable Angelic Rappers from CCPS.